Menu

Uncategorised

As we start a new year I can’t help but feel that elements of comedy will be involved… actually I really hope they will be. On a personal note I’ve signed up already for two of the four events I will be running this year; The Wall and The Great North Run, next will be the Edinburgh Ultra Trail and the Gateshead 10km. I love my challenges and am looking forward to them all! This year I won’t be running for any charities, but I would ask that you donate to your local blood bank, either blood, plasma, platelets or cash.

Power BI in 2017 – so after suffering some set backs and there being issues with the way that the current Enterprise On-Premise Gateway is implemented I had to call a halt to Direct Query testing. To be honest I can see Direct Query being a blessing and a curse to an organisation. Some of our use cases will need Direct Query to be fully realised – mostly operational reporting. But our traditional reporting really benefits from the Power BI. I’ve lost count of the number of calls I’ve had recently that have felt like infomercials. “Oh you want to report on that by something different, that’s no problem with Power BI it’s a snap” and while privately I do throw up in my mouth a little at the sheer cheese factor, I’m blown away each and every time as are my colleagues.

Maybe starting the post and thinking of doing something drawing parallels to Trading Places was a stretch too far, but I do feel ahead of the game now. Experience and many scars teach us that no matter what is produced they’ll always want more, but now instead of running around frantic like the other guys in the stock exchange I’m calm and collected. So I’ll end with a quote from the cinematic classic that is Trading Places

“Looking good, Billy Ray!”

“Feeling good, Louis!”

Share this:

It’s no secret that I think Power BI is great, even on days like today when Power BI has well and truly shafted me. Half the day has been lost by crashes and everything is getting tense, but still Power BI is going to deliver. The biggest challenge you’ll face with Direct Query is that it is only able to do a subset the things that your normal “full fat” Power BI deployment can do. As you no doubt read in my other post “A Plan Forms” lots of businesses will like Direct Query, certainly as a day one proposal when starting in Power BI.

Once you start down the Direct Query route be prepared to consider that you have to make sure there’s plenty of headaches on the road to victory. Undertaking it though is well worth it. I will continue to keep you informed of my progress and you can sneer at my mistake and hopefully we can have some thigh slapping moments together.

Categories

I have been working in the IT sector for over 15 years, over that time I have held a number of roles from first line support to third line support as well as doing consultancy and system design and implementation....